Transference and dream in illness: waxing psyche, waning body

In times of change, crisis, and illness, the excited points of an individual's personal history are reactivated within the transference and may also be noted by observing countertransference. When there are anomalies in the emotional and imaginal circle of the therapeutic relationship, there is occasion for repetition and/or a transformative opening. In some cases, there is simultaneous treatment of severe developmental fixations and compulsions, and issues of individuation. Images may emerge both from the personal field and from the collective and archetypal imagination. These may be expressions of interpersonal experience, intrapsychic dynamics, and physical as well as psychic state.     

Playing with Dreams: The Introduction of a Third Party into the Transference Dynamic of the Couple

Dreams in couple therapy are expressions of the multiple discontinuous selves of partners and of interpersonal defenses. Two dreams offered during analytic couple therapy illustrate the use of transference and countertransference to observe disturbances in self-cohesion, communication of self-states, and attempts to affectively influence the partner. Dreams transferentially communicate the state of the realtionship, activate a third formation expressing shared pathology, and facilitate the growth of new aspects of the self seeking a more loving bond.     

Paradoxical drug response and the placebo effect: a discussion of Grunbaum's definitional scheme

Grunbaum claims that the remedial failure of atreatment's characteristic factors is thegeneric, objective property of a placebo. Hestipulates that a treatment is placebic if thisremedial failure exacerbates the targetdisorder. This stipulation can subsume asplacebic effects that might be solelypharmacological, e.g., paradoxical reactions tocertain psychiatric drugs. If that exacerbationcan be explained pharmacologically, then wemight question whether Grunbaum's definitionalscheme captures the core identity of what weusually intend by the placebo concept. Ipropose that this core identity is bestcaptured by a symbolic meaning hypothesis inwhich psychological factors exert thedeterminative influence.     

Complexities and paradoxes in our organizational life

This paper (a version of which was delivered at the North/South Conference of California Jungians in 1997) delineates some of the effects of the complex relationships that occur within and between analytic institutes, particularly when there are training programmes in the institutes. It notes how confidentiality is handled, discusses the pair structures within the institutes and focuses on developing awareness of organizational relationships and how colleagues treat one another.     

Critical Notice

Book reviewed in this article:
Alister, Ian and Hauke, Christopher (eds.), Contemporary Jungian Analysis. Post-Jungian Perspectives from the Society of Analytical Psychology     

Psychotherapy for lesbians: The influence of therapist sexuality

This study explored the influence of therapist sexuality upon lesbian experiences of therapy, and particularly the influence of marginal and dominant discourses within the process. It is argued that explorations of discourses of sexuality should be a necessary feature of a psychotherapist's training. A postmodern feminist methodology — Bungay and Keddy's adaptation of Reinharz's experiential analysis — was used in the study. This method involved triangulation of interview, literature analysis and reflective diary methods, with analysis drawing upon a discourse analytic perspective. Two sites of contradiction were explored, indicating the possible emergence of resistant lesbian discourses against the dominant patriarchal, heterosexist and homophobic discourses. The study illustrates the discursive and contextual nature of psychotherapy with lesbians.     

Who will Stir the Water for Us? A Pastoral Retrospective

This essay explores a parish-based pastoral counseling case with a terminally ill woman suffering from crippling memories of childhood trauma. The analysis of the case focuses on the mutual influence arising within relational field, the idealizing transference (Kohut) or archetypal projection (Jung) onto the pastoral caregiver, and the purposeful function of a symbol which arose spontaneously in the work. Recalling the ancient incubation rites of Aesculapius, the article concludes by suggesting parallels for illuminating modern approaches to psychological and religious healing.     

THE ANALYST'S WAY OF BEING: RECOGNIZING SEPARABLE SUBJECTIVITIES AND THE PENDULUM'S SWING

Whether the analyst finds the patient's emerging transference affectively tolerable or intolerable plays an important role in the analytic couple's negotiation of the configuration that the transference‐countertransference relationship ultimately assumes. If the analyst is deeply repelled by transference‐related roles to which he is assigned, patient‐ascribed attributions, or projection‐drenched interactions, he may react in violent protest, engaging in enactments that say more about his separable subjectivity than about the intersubjective situation. While there has been a recent trend to view enactments as a crucial aspect of psychoanalytic technique, this trend risks overlooking the way in which the analyst's way of being comes into play in the treatment.     

Sandplay therapy with couples within the framework of analytical psychology

Sandplay therapy with couples is discussed within an analytical framework. Guidelines are proposed as a means of developing this relatively new area within sandplay therapy, and as a platform to open a wider discussion to bring together sandplay therapy and couple therapy. Examples of sand trays created during couple therapy are also presented to illustrate the transformations during the therapeutic process.